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With apparent indulgence Lola encouragedthe child's continued visit, and it was obviousto all, as Lola was ever so fond of teUingMina and every visitor to the house, that thechild and the bird were charmingly inseparable.One market day, however, a network of Mina'srelatives from the farm descended on the yardand amidst much good-humoured talk, noiseand laughter, Alpheus was carried off homeagain to comfort a pining grandmother.The next morning Mina announced that thepleasures of the table need no longer be sacrificedto sentiment and, in the face of thisrenewed generosity and pressing goodwill, Sundaywas appointed the festal day. Lola acceptedwith grace, for she was a naturally politeperson, but she was upset. It was not that shehad even minded, after the first awkwardoccasions, entertaining educated natives todinner for her husband's sake; he lectured inNative Administration and sometimes he hadto, before all those laws came in, bring themhome when they arrived as visiting lecturersfrom other places. It was his job, and anywayhe was a Hberal, and he liked it. Sometimesshe wondered during the meal, whether theyused cutlery at home, as she had often seenMina and her relatives eating with their hands;they were nimble enough the way they screwedthe thumb and forefingers around a slice ofbread and sopped the gravy clean off the dish.It was of course unpleasant when her guestsbent right forward over their plates andsmacked their lips together wetly when theyate, but then, as she had said to her mother,not all natives did that, did they?What she definitely disliked was having toeat their food. You never really knew whereit came from or what it had been raised on.She understood that they couldn't help beingpoor and therefore dirty, but it was a fact thatthey were dirty and that their food was dirtytoo. It was just one of those facts you couldn'tget away from.She thought of a train journey she had oftentaken from Durban to Johannesburg. At everysmall siding on the line there seemed to bethose tin shanties which sprawled away downthe slopes into smoky valleys below. She heardagain the barking of their thin black dogs andthe subdued murmur of many people hiddenfrom sight under the corrugated iron roofs.Occasionally she would glimpse the nativesmoving about amongst the flapping washing.their dark figures offset by the ripple of abright cotton garment blown in the wind, butalways on some dirty rubbish heaps, or in oneof those sUmy cesspools which seeped downthe hillside, their scraggy fowls could be seenscrabbling about. How could she tell if Mina'sfarm was any cleaner than those slums? Shehad never been there.And she knew that natives ate those partsof the animal, parts like the squashed entrailsof people after an accident, that you werenever meant to see. She had to walk throughtheir butcher shops when she went for cheapfish down to the Indian market, for a goodhousewife must often put up with inconveniencefor the sake of economy. Above thesweaty, jostling black people shouting and bargainingtogether she had seen, for the first time,hung on hooks for display, those hideousopaque hosepipes of intestine, sometimes witha spatter of urmientionable yellowing decaystill on them, the bright orange pancreates,decorated with red trelliswork, and the bulginghearts and ripe livers.And below, on the shuffling dirt of themarket floor, she could sometimes not avoidtrampling in, so that she almost felt it underthe sole of her foot and her stomach squirmedwhile she squeezed up her toes and rubbed hershoe hard on the ground to remove it, a splatof slow-popping grey spittle, like a section ofjellyfish washed up on the shore, separatedfrom the living organism, yet still pulsating,bristling, with those T.B. germs which it explodedinto the air. How different a visit to heruncrowded butcher's shop where well-dressedhousewives stood in front of the gleamingrefrigeration counter, waiting to be served bythe affable butcher in his clean blue-stripedapron. From the recognisable but abstractoblongs of meat he would cut the joints sheordered and wrap them first in white and thenin brown paper.Set in the windows the trussed chickenswould be pink and plump, haunched on theirtender coccyges as neat as schoolgirls in assembly.Sometimes there might be brains, or kidneys,or even tripe on display but they would bechilled and bloodless, wrapped in hygienicplastic bags and stacked together on a whiteenamel dish in a cunning and even aestheticpatchwork of colour.There was never the faintest murmur here32 WESTERLY, No. 1, MARCH, 1 968